Baylor Stadium to be home to the UrsaTron

Yesterday, during an appearance on David Smoak's radio show in Waco, Baylor AD Ian McCaw reportedly dropped a bombshell of some import in announcing that the new, riverside stadium project will feature one massive video board rather than the two seen in every rendering of the stadium to date. That board will apparently be approximately 4,500 square feet total, though I don't know how much of that will be actual viewing space. For the sake of comparison, the current video board at Floyd Casey Stadium is listed by wikipedia at 713 square feet, meaning this would be about a 600% increase should the plan come to fruition.

According to Wikipedia's listing of all FBS video boards, the new Ursatron (my name for it, not by any means official) would rank 12th in the country in overall size just behind that installed at Neyland Stadium by the University of Tennessee and in front of the board installed this past season by the University of South Carolina. The largest board in the country is, of course, still Godzillatron at the University of Texas.

Without knowing more about it in terms of actual dimensions, I think we can make a rough guess based on those at Neyland and Williams-Bryce (4,588 and 4,464 square feet, respectively). Both boards are 124 feet wide with the primary difference being the height. Neyland's is 37 feet tall while William-Bryce's is 36. To get to 4,500 square feet, right between the two, Baylor will probably choose a similar alignment. It all depends on the resolution sought, though.

I probably went a little overboard calling this a "bombshell," but for those of us excited about Baylor's new stadium plans, it is a significant development. The dual video boards seen to this point were an important feature of the stadium design, which highlighted the view provided of the rest of the Baylor campus. A switch now to a centrally-located megaboard will obviously impact that view, and depending on how you feel about that, you may not like this news. I, however, welcome our new Ursatron overlord.

The picture adorning this post shows the video board installed at Williams-Bryce Stadium, home to the South Carolina Gamecocks. It should give you some indication the size of the board we're talking about, but remember that their stadium holds 80,000 while ours will have the signature overhanging roof and a capacity of only 45,000. This is going to be a massive board, indeed.